A bronze statue of President Ronald Reagan stands Wednesday in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington after an unveiling ceremony.

Washington ? This time, Ronald Reagan really was larger than life.

Seven feet tall, in fact, cast in bronze and unveiled Wednesday in the Capitol Rotunda next to another popular Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Former first lady Nancy Reagan shed a tear when a blue curtain fell away and revealed the visage of her beloved “Ronnie,” standing tall as a head of state and bearing the trademark twinkle of a movie star who understood the power of humor in politics.

She reached out and touched the statue’s knee.

“The last time that I was in this room was for Ronnie’s service,” Mrs. Reagan, 87, told the Reagan-era officials and their successors who packed the Rotunda. “It’s nice to be back under happier circumstances.”

Reagan, who died in 2004, was the nation’s 40th president, from 1981-1989. There was bipartisan agreement that his statue belonged in the Rotunda, the symbolic core of American government. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama created the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission to plan and carry out activities marking the 100th anniversary, in 2011, of Reagan’s birth.

His legacy includes the spread of democracy after his dramatic appeal in Berlin to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” The Berlin Wall that divided East and West Germany fell in 1989, a symbol of the decline of communism and the thawing of the Cold War. Pieces of it are embedded in the statue, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.